Living, Dying With Regret

Video/DVD - TOP RELEASE

In This Canadian Film, A Group Of Intellectuals Looks Back On The Rise And Fall Of Their Political And Hedonist Lives.

July 16, 2004|By Roger Moore, Sentinel Movie Critic

**** The Barbarian Invasions (Buena Vista; 99 minutes; rated R for language, sexual dialogue and drug content; priced for rental, $29.99 for DVD): The partner-swapping band of academics and intellectuals who gathered for a weekend romp in the 1986 Canadian film The Decline of the American Empire are older and a little wiser in The Barbarian Invasions, Denys Arcand's elegantly chatty and militantly incorrect sequel to his ode to sex and politics among those who think.

It's 17 years later, and the seven friends and lovers of Decline are seeing the consequences of their lives -- the books not written, the marriages not made or kept, the children who grew up damaged.

The womanizing historian Remy (Remy Girard) has aged into a "socialist hedonist lecher," still able to argue with anything, still a shameless flirt. But now he's flirting and arguing with nurses. Remy is dying of cancer.

His estranged son, Sebastien (Stephane Rousseau), is a wealthy, successful and conservative London businessman who dutifully flies home and starts taking care of his father. The son rounds up Dad's old friends, including ex-wife Louise, ex-girlfriend Dominique and the fellow history teachers with whom he once debated Marxism and sexual technique. They have a last drink and last laugh with Remy at the same lakefront house where they argued over America's "decline."

Barbarian Invasions, which won the foreign-film Oscar earlier this year, is a nicely balanced blend of sentiment and acrid wit. You don't have to have seen or remember The Decline of the American Empire to appreciate Arcand's affection for these characters. The way they look back over, spin or simply deny past mistakes is simply human nature perfectly observed. The rifts that heal are recognizable, the arguments and debates (in French with English subtitles) are comical and universal.

It's telling to note that the smartest reunion film since John Sayles' Return of the Secaucus Seven, a movie that questions the nature of America and the ebb and flow of its history, had to be made with Canadian government money.